Gary Leu

CoFounder VideoSkills Academy

My Dad introduced me to photography when I was just a boy. He taught my brother and I the fundamentals of darkroom practices, chemicals, enlargers, printing, film developing and printing techniques. I worked in the photo-journalism departments of both Jr. and Sr. High Schools using everything from sheet film to 35mm. In college I worked for a professional portrait studio as a lab tech and photographer. When new technology emerged affording many of us the capabilities of shooting video I eagerly adopted the 8mm film and soon the VHS and Beta tape platforms. It wasn't long before the much smaller 8mm videotape and Hi8 emerged on the scene. DV and mini DV machines popped up to capture our motion pictures and when the hard drive and with the introduction of the mini DVD camcorders I thought we finally arrived! Here I was, burning my HD movies right on a playable DVD that I could pop into any player or editing suite. Of course we've progressed way beyond that these days with the advent of solid state media storage and DSLRs that shoot amazing HD video. All this time I've been a freelance photographer, videographer and avid hobbyist. In my most recent professional career I worked as a broadcast maintenance engineer at Fox2 in St. Louis. For a couple of decades I've been building and developing websites using HTML and a variety of template tools. I've been a photo and video contributor at IHS Productions, Art of Film and LLS Media Solutions.

Keeping up with the advances in technology can be challenging and enriching. My desire is to share with you the experiences I've gained over the years that have given me unbelievable enjoyment and satisfaction.